George MacDonald and D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones on “poverty of spirit”

George MacDonald offers a unique, and what I consider to be a very emancipating, view of money when he writes: “Money is not mammon. It is God’s invention. It is good and the gift of God. If it were not for money and the need of it, there would not be half the friendships in the world. It is powerful for good when divinely used. Give it plenty of air, and it is sweet as the hawthorn. But shut it up, and it rots and breeds worms. Like the earth itself, like the heart and mind of man, it must be broken and turned, not heaped together and neglected” (Discovering the Character of God, 129). …
Holding on to money and the control it gives, for whatever reason we choose, is a very tempting thing to do. … Letting go means trusting something we can’t see. Still, being “poor in spirit” doesn’t necessarily require an abandonment of friends or influence or money. And being “poor in spirit” is not impossible even if one is rich. That’s because, as D. Martyn Lloyd- Jones wrote, “What our Lord is concerned about here is that poverty of spirit is ultimately a man’s attitude towards himself” (Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 44). (from Power of Yielding, pp. 124-125)